Future of CSPPA unknown after website goes offline; board members depart

Silence from the association and the departure of multiple high-profile members leaves its future uncertain.

The status of the Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association is up in the air after a period of prolonged silence from the organization, with Zvonimir "⁠Professeur⁠" Burazin recently pointing out that the CSPPA website is offline and that their URL now fails to resolve. The website outage, combined with a handful of high-profile departures that were confirmed by Dust2.us and HLTV, leads to many questions surrounding the association's future and its impact going into CS2.

HLTV and Dust2.us contacted a number of current and former CSPPA members, with many of those we reached out to uncertain on the status of the association as a whole. We also learned several key members have departed the CSPPA, with many leaving in silence despite being part of the board.

We confirmed that Johnny "⁠JT⁠" Theodosiou, Maikil "⁠Golden⁠" Selim, and Martin "⁠STYKO⁠" Styk are no longer a part of the board and left at varying timelines, with the first pair only confirming their departures while STYKO shared that he chose to leave due a combination of a busy schedule and feeling like little was being accomplished by the CSPPA.

"I felt like not much was being done," the Slovakian rifler explained to Dust2.us. "People in charge were barely communicating with us, meetings became irregular... I felt like I was not contributing via CSPPA to the well-being of the scene and therefore I felt like I don't want to associate myself with the project, for now."

STYKO was a particularly active member of the CSPPA board, at times helping to rally the association at crucial moments (for example, when Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov's smoke bug caught teams off guard at PGL Major Antwerp). His departure, alongside that of two other members of the board, leaves the CSPPA with a rump board consisting of inactive pro Chris "⁠chrisJ⁠" de Jong, Max "⁠MiGHTYMAX⁠" Heath, and Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire. However, when contacted by HLTV, apEX stated that he had "no clue" about the CSPPA's current activities and would also depart the board soon.

MiGHTYMAX confirmed he remained a part of the board and indicated that there were conversations earlier in the year about "re-launching" the CSPPA after its previous COO, Michael Døi, stepped down. Dust2.us confirmed that Døi departed the CSPPA sometime early in 2023, aligning with the association's most recent tweet in September 2022 which was a job posting for the role of COO. MiGHTYMAX also stated that chrisJ took over as an interim manager during the search and that they "found a guy from Canada" to replace Døi, but that his addition was never announced. HLTV learned the identity of this individual but they did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Mads Øland, the previous CEO of the CSPPA, transitioned to an advisory role in 2021. However, HLTV and Dust2.us were unable to verify whether he remains active in that role or in any capacity for the CSPPA.